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British Muslim activism has evolved constantly in recent decades. What have been its main groups and how do their leaders compete to attract followers? Which social and religious ideas from abroad are most influential? In this groundbreaking study, Sadek Hamid traces the evolution of Sufi, Salafi and Islamist activist groups in Britain, including The Young Muslims UK, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Salafi JIMAS organisation and Traditional Islam Network. With reference to second-generation British Muslims especially, he explains how these groups gain and lose support, embrace and reject foreign ideologies, and succeed and fail to provide youth with compelling models of British Muslim identity. Analyzing historical and firsthand community research, Hamid gives a compelling account of the complexity that underlies reductionist media narratives of Islamic activism in Britain.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
“
Taking Islam to the People:” The Young Muslims UK
“Khalifah Coming soon:” The Rise and Fall of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain
“Returning to the Quran and Sunnah:” The Salafi Dawah
Sufism Fights back: The Emergence of the “Traditional Islam” Network
Discourses of Dawah: Understanding the Appeal of the Trends
Fragmentation and Adaptation: The Impact of Social Change
Contemporary British Islamic Activism
Notes
Bibliography
About the author
Sadek Hamid is currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Liverpool Hope University. He has written widely about British Muslims, young people and religious activism and is the editor of Young British Muslims: Between Rhetoric and Real Lives (2016) and co-editor of Youth Work and Islam: a Leap of Faith for Young People (2011).
Summary
British Muslim activism has evolved constantly in recent decades. What have been its main groups and how do their leaders compete to attract followers? Which social and religious ideas from abroad are most influential? In this groundbreaking study, Sadek Hamid traces the evolution of Sufi, Salafi and Islamist activist groups in Britain, including The Young Muslims UK, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Salafi JIMAS organisation and Traditional Islam Network. With reference to second-generation British Muslims especially, he explains how these groups gain and lose support, embrace and reject foreign ideologies, and succeed and fail to provide youth with compelling models of British Muslim identity. Analyzing historical and firsthand community research, Hamid gives a compelling account of the complexity that underlies reductionist media narratives of Islamic activism in Britain.
Additional text
A valuable contribution to scholarship relating to Muslims in Britain and has started to fill in one of the many gaps in the field. Methodologically, the book represents years of careful research, providing a comprehensive insider account of these movements. It is furthermore theoretically rigorous, while also accessible enough for the introductory reader. One is therefore left hoping that it will receive the wide reading – especially among journalists and policy-makers – that it so richly deserves.
